[Foundation-l] Is Google translation is good for Wikipedias?

[Nathan]

Just to be sure I understand... What's happening here is that human
beings, using a software tool, are translating articles from the
English Wikipedia into a variety of other languages and posting them
on the comparatively small Wikipedia projects in these languages. The
articles, of unknown intrinsic quality, are usually mid to low quality
translations.

In the projects with an active community, some have rejected these
articles because they are not high quality and because the community
refuses to be responsible for fixing punctuation and other errors made
by editors who are not members of the community. In the projects
without an active community, Wikimedians (who may not speak any of the
languages affected by the Google initiative) are objecting for a
variety of other reasons - because the software used to assist
translation isn't free, because the effort is managed by a commercial
organization or because the endeavor wasn't cleared with the Wikimedia
community first. Some are also concerned that these new articles will
somehow deter new editors from becoming involved, despite clear
evidence that a larger base of content attracts more readers, and more
readers plus imperfect content leads to more editors.

What I find interesting is that few seem to be interested in keeping
or improving the translated articles; Google's attempt to provide
content in under-served languages is actually offending Wikimedians,
despite our ostensible commitment to the same goal. Concerns like
bureaucratic pre-approval, using free software, etc. are somehow more
important than reaching more people with more content. It all seems
strange and un-Wikimedian like to me. Obviously there are things
Google should have done differently. Maybe working with them to
improve their process should be the focus here?